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Square Foot Construction Cost

The square foot construction cost is the bottom line on how much a new building project will cost the homebuyer. The square foot construction cost tallies up the total cost of all items involved in the construction of the building, minus the cost of the land it is built on.

The square foot construction cost does not put a value on each specific square foot, but divides the total price of the building by the number of square feet. The square foot construction cost includes items like the cost of the foundation and the price of the walls, flooring and roofing. It also takes into account wiring, plumbing and heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. In some cases, the square foot construction cost can include additions selected by the property owner, from tinted windows to solar panels or higher-cost flooring, woodworking or countertops.

Computer estimating programs can help develop an accurate idea of the square foot construction cost on a project. These programs can be purchased by a general contractor and installed on their computers, or, increasingly, it can be Web-based. These programs can be very general, monitoring the overall cost of a project, or it can be highly specific, depending on the contractor's needs. There are programs aimed at certain segments of the construction industry, from residential to general to heavy construction. There are programs for carpentry estimating; conceptual estimating; concrete estimating and insurance claims estimating, as well as any miscellaneous estimating work that needs to be done. There construction job cost software programs specializing in plumbing, piping and HVAC, as well as repair and remodeling tasks.

The benefits of using these programs to determine the square foot construction cost are substantial. Using software programs that are able to monitor budgets and construction costs constantly, general contractors are able to keep track of the financial status on a daily or hourly basis as opposed to far less frequently when the work was being done by an employee. All budgetary information is stored in one location and is easily accessed, as opposed to when it was manually placed in separate files. The likelihood of errors is also far less than it would be if the budgetary computations were done by hand.

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